Edit: Bah. Chart I pasted above doesn't look good. I attached a spreadsheet.(all expenses are for a single person)

I'm a little sad to hear Salt Lake City is in last, but I have heard there's too many college grads from U of U & BYU that want to stay in Utah, which decreases wages...

What are your thoughts on this? Does it make sense for me to move to DC/Dallas/NY to get the high wage to get FI faster? I wonder if those cities are working over 40 hours a week... But I'm sure the average hours worked from city to city is probably the same...

Wait a minute, I think you are using the expenses of someone just scraping by rather than the stated incomes. For example, the MIT site lists taxes for DC at $5,700 and SLC at $3,779. However, plugging in the stated Business/Finance salaries into https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes shows that your tax burden (assuming 18k going to 401k) would be $19,442 in DC and $10,097 in SLC.

I lived in Austin for years and I loved it - although the traffic is fairly horrendous now. You would probably want to do some job searches to verify that you could get the salary that you want. Austin is home to a large university and very close to a large number of other universities and colleges, and a lot of those kids want to stay in the area.

Are you planning to rent or buy? In Texas, we don't have a state income tax, and they make up the revenue with high property taxes. If you are planning to buy a home soon, you'll need to keep those additional costs in mind. If you are renting, keep in mind that there are tens of thousands of students looking for cheap housing too.

I'm in IT, and when I worked in Austin salaries were often lower than a lot of the other areas, but benefits could be really, really good (stock grants, employee stock purchase, good 401k matching). I assume that's still the case now (10 years later). These types of benefits don't get included in the generic salary surveys.

I plan to rent, and have a couple roommates too! Since I'm single and flexible with my housing situation, this is why I'm particularly interested in going to places with high salaries... I think I can minimize expenses compared to the average person.

Interesting to hear salaries were lower compare to other areas...

Maybe I'm thinking a little too hard regarding where to relocate... I want to hit FI ASAP and like the idea of temporarily relocating to different places (helps fulfill my need to travel). Hopefully I could score a relocation package too??